Global Digital Activism Data Set, 2013 (ICPSR 34625)

The Global Digital Activism Data Set (GDADS), released February 2013 by the Digital Activism Research Project (DARP) at the University of Washington in Seattle, features coded cases of online digital activism from 151 countries and dependent territories. Several features from each case of digital activism were documented, including the year that online action commenced, the country of origin of the initiator(s), the geographic scope of their campaign, and whether the action was online only, or also featured offline activities. Researchers were ... (more info)

The Global Digital Activism Data Set (GDADS), released February 2013 by the Digital Activism Research Project (DARP) at the University of Washington in Seattle, features coded cases of online digital activism from 151 countries and dependent territories. Several features from each case of digital activism were documented, including the year that online action commenced, the country of origin of the initiator(s), the geographic scope of their campaign, and whether the action was online only, or also featured offline activities. Researchers were interested in the number and types of software applications that were used by digital activists. Specifically, information was collected on whether software applications were used to circumvent censorship or evade government surveillance, to transfer money or resources, to aid in co-creation by a collaborative group, or for purposes of networking, mobilization, information sharing, or technical violence (destructive/disruptive hacking). The collection illustrates the overall focus of each case of digital activism by defining the cause advanced or defended by the action, the initiator's diagnosis of the problem and its perceived origin, the identification of the targeted audience that the campaign sought to mobilize, as well as the target whose actions the initiators aimed to influence. Finally, each case of digital activism was evaluated in terms of its success or failure in achieving the initiator's objectives, and whether any other positive outcomes were apparent.

Access Notes

Data in this collection are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions.
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access to these data files.

Dataset 2: Case Sources has not been processed by ICPSR; the original Excel spreadsheet deposited by the Principal Investigator has been included with this release.

Methodology

Study Purpose:
Through GDADS and associated works, DARP aims to study the effect of digital technology on civic engagement, nonviolent protest, and political change around the world.

Study Design:
The GDADS contains three sets of data: (1) Coded Cases, (2) Case Sources, and (3) Coded Cases 2.0. The Coded Cases dataset contains 1179 coded cases of digital activism from 1982 through 2012. The Case Sources dataset is an original deposited Excel document that contains source listings from all cases documented by researchers, including those that were ultimately excluded from the original Coded Cases dataset. Coded Cases 2.0 contains 426 additional cases from 2010 through 2012; these cases were treated with a revised coding scheme and an extended review process. GDADS was assembled with the following inclusion criteria: cases needed to exhibit either (1) an activism campaign with at least one digital tactic, or (2) an instance of online discourse aimed at achieving social or political change, and (3) needed to be described by a reliable third party source. In addition to these inclusion criteria, researchers required that the digital activism be initiated by a traditional civil society organization, such as a nongovernmental organization or a nonprofit, or by the collaborative effort of one or more citizens. Digital activism cases initiated by governments or for-profit entities were not included in the collection. The data were assembled by a team of volunteers searching Web sites that are known to document global digital activism; researchers also collected data from peer reviewed journal articles that included digital activism case studies.

Sample:
Dataset 1: Coded Cases, contains the entire collection of coded cases, according to the inclusion criteria, for 1982-2009, but is incomplete for 2010-2012. Dataset 2: Case Sources, is an original deposited Excel document that contains links and citations used to code dataset 1 cases, plus 166 cases collected but not included in dataset 1. Dataset 3: Coded Cases 2.0, contains additional cases using purposive, multi-source, multilingual, sampling. For more information on sampling, please refer to the Methodology section in the ICPSR Codebooks.

Weight:
This data collection does not feature a weighting scheme.

Mode of Data Collection:
mixed mode

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2013-06-10

Version History:

2014-06-12 The collection has been updated with file set 3, Coded Cases 2.0, which contains additional cases that use an updated coding scheme.